South Africa’s CSVR Withdraws from Genocide Studies Conference in Israel

June 22, 2016

Occupied Jerusalem --The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) in South Africa for taking the principled decision to cancel its participation at the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) conference next week (26-29 June) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

CSVR has shown with this decision admirable consistency with its mission of social justice, sustainable peace and human rights. CSVR stated in a statement that it “cannot turn a blind eye to the nature of the location and the host institutions for the conference.” We warmly welcome CSVR’s courage and sense of moral responsibility to confront the facts about the Hebrew University’s complicity in the oppression of Palestinians and the subsequent refusal to legitimize this ongoing injustice.

We thank also our partner BDS South Africa for making CSVR aware of the Palestinian appeal for a boycott of the conference and the facts about the Hebrew University role in colonizing Palestinian land and entrenching the Israeli occupation and apartheid.

PACBI wrote to INoGS asking that it move its 2016 conference from the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus built partially on land violently taken from Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem, in violation of international law. INoGS ignored PACBI’s appeal and a similar appeal from 270 academics from 19 countries. PACBI also wrote to Rosa Luxemburg questioning its funding to a settlement-institution, but the Foundation refused to withdraw support, reciting German history to justify the exceptional and unethical German treatment of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid as a state above international law.

We call on participants of the INoGS conference, speakers and attendees, to follow CSVR’s principled lead and to withdraw their participation from the conference. Academics traveling from abroad who have already purchased their tickets or traveled to the conference can still make good use of the trip to conduct field work and meet with human rights organizations.